40′s movies marathon – best of 1946

Trends of the year: Everyone’s making noir, and it’s getting a bit old.  The only funny comedy team of the 30′s and 40′s makes their last movie.  Horror isn’t particularly scary, but it’s getting to a point where it’s no longer just some guy in monster makeup walking through the fog.  And Britain keeps doing their own thing.

Favorite moments: A pilot jumping to his death, Peter Lorre going mad, two professional killers walking into a diner, Vincent Price being EVIL, and Rita Hayworth being indecent.

British invasion

A Matter of Life and Death

Great Expectations

I See a Dark Stranger

The Captive Heart

Green for Danger

Pink String and Sealing Wax

Noir

Gilda

The Big Sleep

The Killers

The Blue Dahlia

Shock

Noir on Ice

Suspense

The yearly Hitchcock

Notorious

Post-war reality check

Till the End of Time

The Best Years of Our Lives

Creeps, freaks and amputated limbs

House of Horrors

Bedlam

The Beast with Five Fingers

Depressed Europeans

Kris

Shoeshine

Ivan the Terrible – Part 2

The rest

The Razor’s Edge

It’s a Wonderful Life

Three Strangers

Humoresque

A Night in Casablanca

40′s movies marathon – best of 1945

The nice thing about watching old movies year by year is that, having now watched early 40′s war-related movies since, oh, April last year, (I was slower back then), I enter 1946 tired of all things war-related, just like the movie audiences of the time, (except for the trauma, missing limbs and lost friends etc.)

That said, I’ve been astounded by the quality of contemporary World War II movies.  The British movies surprised me the most.  Hollywood is consistently good at this point, but the British movies are the most creative and ambitious.  Hollywood films war.  Britain films a society at war, changing under the impact.

Here are my favorites from 1945:

Thugs and women of negotiable virtue

Scarlet Street

Conflict

Dillinger

Confidential Agent

Cornered

The yearly Hitchcock

Spellbound

War, huh, what it is good for

A Walk in the Sun

The Story of G. I. Joe

The True Glory

To the Shores of Iwo Jima

Perfect Strangers

A Bell for Adano

The Way to the Stars

Various islanders

‘I Know Where I’m Going!’

Caesar and Cleopatra

The jokes, they are funny

A Royal Scandal

Zombies on Broadway

Wonder Man

Hello kitty

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail

The Famous Sword Bijomaru

That puppet still freaks me out

Dead of Night

Isle of the Dead

Dramatic performances

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Lost Weekend

Roughly Speaking

40′s movies marathon – Best of 1944

1944 is over, and it’s time to list my favorite movies of the year:

Preston Sturges FTW

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

Hail the Conquering Hero

Shadows and dark intentions

Murder, My Sweet

Lifeboat

Ministry of Fear

To Have and Have Not

Dark Waters

The Mask of Dimitrios

Ealing & Powell & Pressburger

A Canterbury Tale

Champagne Charlie

Fiddlers Three

Cheer up, there’s a war on!

Up in Arms

Pin Up Girl

Bands of brothers (and sisters)

Henry V

The Way Ahead

Ichiban Utsukushiku

The Fighting Lady

Other oddities

Jane Eyre

Hets

Ivan Grozny – Part 1

The Hairy Ape

Miyamoto Musashi

Voodoo Man

The True Story of Lilli Marlene

As the new year begins, many questions remain to be answered.  Will the war end this year?  If it does, will war musicals end as well, or mutate into something even more horrible?  And is this the worst decade EVER, or what?

40′s movies marathon – best of 1943

As a service for readers who have misunderstood the movie marathon concept, and think it’s about me being nice and selecting all the Classic Movies for you, here’s my favorites from 1943:

Good war movies

This Land is Mine
Sahara
Five Graves to Cairo

War movies (and cartoons) that transcend good and bad, and should be watched for mindblowing historical reasons

Victory Through Air Power (Pictures)
Mission to Moscow
Private SNAFU

Dark movies from the dark continent

Vredens Dag
Ossessione
Le Corbeau

Axis movies

Münchhausen
Sugata Sanshiro

Noir

The Fallen Sparrow
Shadow of a Doubt

Peculiar Britishness

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

American self-doubt

The Ox Bow Incident

Segregated musicals

Stormy Weather

40′s movies marathon – best of 1942

I’m (almost) through 1942 in the movie marathon. Here are my favourites:

Comedies that may include music

The Palm Beach Story
The Man Who Came to Dinner
To Be or Not to Be
Holiday Inn

Gangsters and/or politicians

Johnny Eager
The Glass Key

The war (I wonder how it will end)

Kampf um Norwegen
Went the Day Well
One of Our Aircraft is Missing

Serious drama (possibly containing cute rabbits)

Now, Voyager
Bambi

And now: 1943, a year of .. even more war and genocide.